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Research on an ancient lunar rock suggests that almost 4 billion years ago, the moon once had a molten, core of liquid metal that generated a strong magnetic field.

The Daily Galaxy quotes planetary scientist Benjamin Weiss as saying, "The moon has this protracted history that’s surprising."

In 1969, the Apollo 11 mission brought the first lunar rocks back to Earth as souvenirs from Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s historic moonwalk. Since then, scientists have studied them for clues to the moon’s history. They soon discovered that many rocks were magnetized, which suggested that the moon may have harbored a convecting metallic core that produced a large magnetic field, now recorded in the moon’s rocks.
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NASA may be planning to capture an asteroid and drag it into the moon’s orbit, giving the Moon a moon of its own.

The mission would cost about $2.6 billion–slightly more than NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover–and it would take about six to 10 years to complete the mission.

But why do it?

What NASA really wants to do is to send astronauts to a nearby asteroid, but this would expose them to long-term radiation beyond the earth’s protective magnetic field –so why not bring the asteroid to them? If we establish a base on the moon, it would be a short trip to reach it.
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Say we do finally get to the moon–how are we going to get all the tools we need to build things up there?
The answer might be the new science of 3-D printing: All you need to do is take along a laptop and a 3-D printer and you can have anything you want. But you need appropriate raw materials to print ON, so it’s still a problem.
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